I'm a contributing editor to Forbes Magazine, where I write about games and technology. My book Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It is a history of one of the most important games of our time.
I'm a primate and a skeptic. I have root access and I'm not afraid to use it. I'm a beer geek. I can make stone tools and arrowheads. I drop science like Galileo dropped the orange. I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.

Reggie Fils-Aime: Why To Choose Wii U This Holiday Season

Nintendo got a big jump on the competition when it released its newest video game console, the Wii U, a year ahead of comparable hardware from Microsoft and Sony. But now that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are finally on shelves, how can the Wii U compete during this ultra-competitive holiday season?

Reggie Fils-Aime, president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, says that the key to the company’s success is all in the software. Last week, Nintendo released three new titles belonging to classic franchises: Super Mario 3D World for Wii U, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Mario Party: Island Tour for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. It now falls to the iconic heroes Link and Mario to drive consumers to Nintendo’s hardware –that, and the console’s innovative GamePad interface, entertainment capabilities, and comparatively low price point.

I spoke to Fils-Aime last month in New York City, and the following excerpts from that conversation are edited for length and clarity.

David Ewalt: The way the holiday season is shaping up this year, your competitors have brand new hardware, and their argument to consumers is going to be “look at this fancy new machine.” Your pitch for the holiday season is “look at these franchises, these are the games you want.” How do you rate your chances?

Reggie Fils-Aime: We rate our chances very good. Software drives hardware in this business. We see it time and time again. We saw it with our Wii and DS businesses. We’re seeing it right now with Nintendo 3DS. It was probably a year ago, I was having similar meetings to these, when the challenge was, “Reggie, what are you doing with your handheld business? How are you gonna grow it?” Well, we bring our great franchises to bear, and watch what happens. Software drives hardware. And we’re having a stellar year. We believe the same will happen with our Wii U business, with these fantastic franchises that we’re bringing to bear this holiday.

I agree that software drives hardware. But this is also an industry where people tend to become distracted by shiny new objects.

That’s very true. But the interesting thing there is, if you look at the last two hardware cycles, it was not the most powerful machine that won, not in the case of the PS2, not in the case of the Wii. So, in the end, it’s our responsibility to show consumers how much fun you can have, because in the end, this is an entertainment business, and we think we’ve got stellar entertainment to make the consumer smile.

But don’t you face a marketing challenge, maybe when the media does a holiday gift guide, or retailers are deciding the hot products they want to promote? With two new consoles coming out, those are likely to get all the attention, not the Wii U.

So that’s where we’re taking our message right to the consumer. To be clear, we’re getting fantastic retailer support, whether it’s GameStop, whether it’s WalMart, whether it’s ToysRUs, Best Buy, Target… all of the key retailers are giving us exceptional support. But in the end, we know we’ve got to take our message right to the consumer. We’re doing that with sampling events. We’re doing more hand held sampling events this year than we’ve done in the past. We’re doing it with our overall marketing activity, and not just the traditional TV activity, but web activity, social media activity. And in the end we’ve got to show the fun that you can have with our devices. And we’re convinced if we do that we’ll generate the word of mouth, and we’ll generate the excitement that’ll drive us through the holiday.

When the Wii U launched last year, a lot of people didn’t understand it was a whole new console. Are you still dealing with that mistaken perception?

That issue has been largely addressed, I think, as we’ve told consumers all the great things you could do with the GamePad as we’ve showed fantastic software like Pikmin 3, and Wonderful 101, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in HD. The consumer I believe now understands this is a brand new system with brand new capabilities. It has all of the benefits of backward compatibility. And we’re the only next gen system with backward compatibility, so the consumer has this great library of games from Wii, can use them with the Wii U. But now they understand all of the new capabilities that they can have.

A big part of Microsoft’s pitch for the holiday season is about multimedia entertainment… they’re arguing that the Xbox One is for TV, for video, for music and everything else. It’s your new home entertainment center. What’s the comparable reason why someone should buy a Wii U?

It’s all about these great franchises. This is the place to get Mario, to get Zelda, to get Donkey Kong. And, we’ve got fantastic entertainment experiences. You can watch Netflix in HD, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu Plus. It’s all there. But what we do on top of that is, we’ve got Nintendo TVii, that lets you sort out and decide what it is that you want to watch based on all of the different services you subscribe to. So our pitch is we’ve got unique differentiators, versus the “I do everything” positioning that our competitors might have.

The Wii U’s Nintendo TVii capabilities are unique, but that’s also an area where I feel like people don’t know the console can do that… so what can you do to show people Nintendo TVii and get them to understand the Wii U’s capabilities?

I want to be clear that first and foremost we’ve gotta drive people into the proposition with the franchises and software we have. That’s the main differentiator. We believe once they have the system, or once they’re interested in the system, helping them understand the benefits of Nintendo TVii is a nice supporting point. And as we’re out in malls and other places having consumers get hands-on experiences, we’re gonna be showcasing those capabilities. But first and foremost it’s about the games. That’s our proposition.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

If Nintendo seriously interested to increase Wii U sales then what they must do is to give us the option to play 3DS games on Wii U when they do that the sales are going to increase for sure, until they do that I’m not interested in their console.

I have seen this comment around, but the logistics of playing a game designed in 240p and blowing it up to 720p would make for a seriously disgusting looking game. You think the jokes are bad now? Put a 240p game on Wii U and you will really have a game that looks like a n64 game.

Actually, if one is looking for a game system first and foremost, the Wii U blows both the PS4 and Xbox One out of the water right now… I mean, they have the most games and their games are, put bluntly, better. This time next year, that won’t be the case… but right now? Speaking as a committed Xbox One owner, the Wii U is just stronger on the game front.

The thing that made the PS2 and WII successful were the unique features they offered at the time like a relatively cheap DVD player for Japanese consumers with PS2 or the WII’s innovative controller. The WII U doesn’t offer anything nearly as innovative or unique. To the average consumer, the WII U is not much different or different enough than the WII.